Ennette stuck close to Zerathon as she and Maziar fell into line to walk through the door. It was a large office, with six desks flanking the carpeted path leading up to the front of the room and one much larger one where a woman Ennette assumed to be the Grand Wizard herself was sitting. She was stunning, and Ennette couldn’t help but blush when she gave them a warm smile.
She was younger than Ennette thought she would be. The book described her as a middle-aged woman with graying hair and wrinkles around her eyes. She’d been horribly injured in a battle with the Dark Magician and his minions, and it had left her weak and scarred to the point that she rarely left her rooms.
But the woman that Ennette now stood face to face with was entirely different.
With deep tan skin and styled, short, wavy hair that fell just past her ears, Yulda Izaria was quite possibly the most beautiful woman Ennette had come across. Heavy earrings of black metal and topaz fell past her locks and brushed against her shoulders. Atop her head was a matching headband, and around her neck was a tasteful topaz gem strung on a fine chain that threatened to fall into the exposed cleavage of her small chest. Wearing a long-sleeved, yellow wrap-around top and black leather pants with lightweight boots that came up just past her calves, she looked more like she should be gracing the cover of a magazine than serving as the Grand Magician of a Tower. She was tall, confident, and radiated charisma.
It was her eyes that got Ennette, though—deep, black eyes that seemed like they could look through all the thoughts in Ennette’s mind and devour them. Ennette wasn’t all that great at obeying authority figures, but there was something about Yulda Izaria that screamed that she was someone not to be crossed.
“You may leave, Zerathon,” the Grand Wizard told the professor in a sharp tone. He bowed and exited, with the door shutting softly behind him.
Ennette wasn’t too happy that he had gone; no matter how kind Yulda Izaria came across here and now, she wasn’t known to be the most pleasant of people in the novel. She was always on the side of the kingdom, but that didn’t mean she felt any need to be ‘nice,’ and Ennette knew that Maziar would never rise to her defense, even if he could.
There was a prolonged silence as the Grand Wizard sat and stared at them as if waiting to see which one would start talking first, but with an aura that told Ennette she was not to speak without first being spoken to.
Whether it was bravery or stupidity, Maziar was the first to open his mouth.
“Grand Wizard, this—”
“I’ll hear your explanation after, Maziar,” she snapped. She stood up and went around her desk with easy strides, her fingertips tracing the edge of the desk. Circling Ennette, she asked, “Your name is Ennette?”
“Yes… ma’am,” said Ennette, swallowing.
Yulda snorted. “No need for that, now. You aren’t my student, nor are you one of my underlings. You may call me Yulda if you like.”
“I couldn’t!” Ennette squeaked, shaking her head quickly. Yulda smiled warmly and with soft eyes. Ennette cringed. It just felt wrong.
“She isn’t going to eat you, you know,” Maziar said, frowning.
“It’s called having ‘manners.’ You could learn a thing or two about it, and it would not cause you to hurt or itch,” she grumbled and turned back to her desk. Maziar mocked her with exaggerated gestures when her back was turned, and Ennette felt like she was about to faint. The Grand Wizard turned back to them as she leaned against the desk and folded her arms. “Zerathon tells me that I am to understand that this poor girl is your new familiar.”
“It seems so,” Maziar grumbled. “I tried to break it, but apparently, the terms of the contract aren’t what I expected them to be.”
“Curious,” she said. “So somehow, you not only botched the summoning but also the deal that you made. I know I’ve asked this before, but do you actually have a death wish?”
He winced. “Could we skip this, maybe, and spend more time trying to find a way to break it?”
Shrugging, Yulda’s eyes began to glow gold as she raised a hand and began to trace a magic circle in the air. It glittered gold as it hung, suspended, and faded when she finished. The air in the room seemed to shift and ebb as similarly golden marks spread out across the room from the point, covering the floor and walls with circles and symbols placed in some kind of organized chaos. None of it meant anything to Ennette, logically, and yet she knew they must have meant something to the two magicians in the room.
Then Yulda frowned.
“Is something wrong?” asked Ennette.
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” said Yulda. “What I’m doing right now is simply tracking the flow of mana in the room by wrapping my own mana around it. Mana, you see, has its own kind of behavioral patterns, and by tracking it, I may be able to identify something about your contract.”
“So, what are you seeing?” Maziar asked.
“Well,” she started with furrowed brows. “I’m honestly not really sure. Ennette, Maziar, could you two walk apart, please?”
They did.
“Come closer again?” She instructed.
They did.
“I understand that this is mildly inappropriate,” Yulda said. “But for the sake of science, Ennette, could you please let Maziar hold your hand?”
Ennette blinked, and she and Maziar exchanged a glance.
“Is it… necessary?” Ennette asked, her mind going blank.
“I’d like to say no, but yes, it is,” Yulda said. “There’s something I need to confirm.”
“Only for a moment,” Maziar told her with a note of warning in his voice and offered Ennette his hand. Hesitantly, she placed it in his. His hand was warm and calloused. She would have thought his hands would have been softer, considering he was a magician, but perhaps he made up for his weaknesses in magic with other things.
“You can let go, but I want you to repeat the processes I asked you to do before,” Yulda instructed and walked around the room as they did so, her mana wrapping itself around the two of them. Seeming to be satisfied, her eyes returned to their natural color as she retracted the spell. The circles and symbols on the walls faded away.
“What did you find?” Maziar asked.
“It’s interesting,” Yulda said. “When you separate, it’s almost like the mana of the whole area grows weaker. You, Maziar, seem to recover your magic twice as fast when you are together.”
Maziar’s eyes went wide. “How is that possible?”
“I’m not sure,” Yulda said. “Something about her is able to stimulate your magic growth in a way I’ve never seen before. What exactly did you write when you drafted the spell?”
He shook his head. “It was just a standard familiar circle. Textbook. But the circle shouldn’t have even worked,” he told her.
“Yes, Zerathon said as much,” she said. “But surely there must have been something.”
“No—that’s not…I didn’t even use my own blood in the ink. I used animal blood. There’s no way I should have been able to summon anything since the data inscribed with the ink and the data of the caster were different,” Maziar admitted. Pausing, Yulda’s eyes flickered to his. “At worst, it should have generated a mana lash because technically, I shouldn’t have been identified as the owner of the circle.”
While Zerathon had been shocked and annoyed that Maziar had sabotaged his spell, Yulda seemed to accept it—if with resignation.
“I assume you did that because of your mana situation?” she asked him.
Maziar’s face fell. “I…don’t need a familiar,” he said. “I just need enough mana to live my life.”
“But if you had summoned a familiar properly, we could have simply dismissed it, Maziar,” she said imploringly. “I know I told you when you came here that you were free to do as you like, but if you were concerned about this, why couldn’t you just come to me first? If you were really so against it, I could have made other arrangements.”
“I don’t need you to go out of your way for me,” he said.
“And why shouldn’t I?”
“It’s better for you to have nothing to do with me,” Maziar said. His eyes were sharp as they glared at the floor. “The other casters…the things they already say about you because of me… but you didn’t even do anything! How can I make them understand that my choices are mine alone?”
“You can’t,” Yulda said shortly. “Aside from the fact that superiors being responsible for those under them is simply the way the world works, it might do you well to remember the fact that I gave birth to you, and no amount of your stupidity is going to change that.”
Ennette frowned as she looked between the two quickly. Maziar with his sand-colored hair and Yulda with her chocolate waves. Maziar with his black eyes and straight nose, and Yulda with her black eyes and straight nose. And those high cheekbones.
Oh, my God, Ennette cursed in her head as her hand went to her mouth to shut herself up. Yulda Izaria, the woman who took Laria in as a disciple to defeat the Dark Magician—was Maziar’s mother?
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